The Kindly Ones

I don't know exactly what go into me to get me to read The Kindly Ones I had a dream that I was a Jew being beaten up by Nazis, and I woke up horrified and decided that I would confront my fears. I get bubbles like that sometimes.

And how come I had The Kindly Ones on hand to "confront my fears"? Because my dear father-in-law (whom I salute) gave me this a few years ago... as a Christmas present! Only he can give gifts like that. "Here, a 1400 page brick that talks about one of the worst atrocities in modern history in great detail! Merry Christmas!"

And yet, against all odds, I "loved" this book. It made my heart ache, but I also laughed a few times, and above all, it made me think a lot.

Summary

We are in the head of an SS during the Second World War. I think that's an adequate summary.

Impressions

I really almost stopped reading after about 30 pages. The book begins with a few scenes of execution that are so graphic and so upsetting that I literally felt nauseous. I read them before going to bed and in order to sleep without too many horrible nightmares I had to listen to a video of cute animals on Youtube. My boyfriend wondered why I was doing this to myself, and I must admit that I did too. I decided to wait a few more pages and that if it went on like that, I would stop. I'm willing to educate myself, but you have to think about your health.

Thankfully, the graphic murders became more spaced out and the book gained more depth. I followed our beloved narrator, Dr. Aue, through his daily life as a Nazi. I got to know his colleagues, learned that while they were all tasked with executing Jews, those who enjoyed it were rather frowned upon. Dr. Aue was not one of them. Not that he had any empathy for the Jews, no, he was very anti-Semitic like everyone else, but the killings made him physically ill, he could not tolerate them very well. He was doing his job, it was a dirty job, but what do you expect, it was the war, he was doing it for the good of Germany.

Then I realized that the narrator has some pretty glaring idiosyncrasies: he sleeps with men because he had sworn loyalty to his twin sister with whom he had an incestuous relationship as a child (a completely one-sided relationship, his sister is married and just wants to forget about all that childhood nonsense). The Nazi regime was severely against homosexuality and he would have been executed if his sexual morals had been discovered, but he doesn't get too worked up about it. He doesn't care that much about life anyway.

Clearly, he already had issues at the beginning of the war, but things get worse. Through appalling conditions, unspeakable horrors, and especially after getting shot in the head, he becomes more and more insane. This leads to scenes that are so delirious that they made me smile. One thing is for sure, it is not boring with this book.

I saw that this book was criticized for "humanizing" an SS. I think that those people who say that have not read the book and have not understood the point at all. Certainly, the SS were human, to deny that is to stick your head in the sand. Certainly, they were not all psychopaths, it's more complicated than that. But the fact that one emphasizes the fact that a being capable of atrocity is a human too does not make that human lovable. The narrator is hateful. AND he is a human.

I think this is the point of the book: being human is not a moral quality. What gives us our "humanity" is not the fact that we belong to our particular species, it's the fact that we are capable of reflection, education, and that we are capable of learning from the mistakes of the past. But if we're brought up with dangerous values, then that leads to things like the Holocaust. Biologically speaking, humans have not evolved in the last 80 years. But we can hope to have learned from our mistakes.

We can hope so, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Le Devoir pointed out this week that one third of Quebecers do not know much about the Holocaust. Meanwhile, in France, there is a far-right candidate who is openly racist and has too much support and which makes Marine le Pen look like a moderate. Hence the interest in not reducing Nazis to simple psychopaths. And hence the interest in continuing to read books like The Kindly Ones.